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Every Halloween, people visit haunted places to see what ghost hunting is really like.
Maybe a ghost will appear or do something weird, just like on TV.
But then, starting the day after Halloween, I hear about people who regretted going out that night.
That’s not because they actually encountered a ghost.
The problem was: the living.
Haunted places are often badly maintained, and off-the-beaten-path.
At the very least, most people avoid them.
So, those same sites are attractive to people who want to stay off-the-radar of the public, and especially the police.
I can’t even guess how many times I visited Gilson Road Cemetery (before the nearby subdivision was built), and discovered teens enjoying a raucous party in the woods behind the cemetery.
Of course, they wanted us to leave. The sooner, the better.
Ditto the number of abandoned, haunted buildings where my team and I stumbled onto drug deals in progress, and so on.
At Halloween, let’s remind aspiring ghost hunters that some haunted sites can be dangerous, and not just because of ghosts and other entities.
Never go ghost hunting alone. Never leave a friend alone at a haunted site. And always have a Plan B escape route if you find yourself in an awkward or scary situation… regardless of the cause.
Related reading: Ghost Hunting Dangers (Lesson 5 in my free Ghost Hunting for Beginners course).